Clickgreener: Shop Till You Drop and Save the Environment

There are those who say that a green consumer is an oxymoron; there are others who say that buying green is better than buying the normal crap. Owen Ward lowers the bar another notch with Clickgreener, a new shopping portal. It aggregates retailers' online websites, many of which give referral fees to sites that forward traffic, and gives 51% of the fees to environmental charities. If you buy a fur coat from the Hudson Bay Company, you can direct your donation to the World Wildlife Fund.

CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR

He told the Star that travel changed him: "I saw an enormous amount of poverty and environmental degradation and it really changed something in me," says the now 29-year-old entrepreneur. "I really believe everyone cares about the environment and everyone wants to do something. The barriers are cost and time. This takes both of those barriers away."

I suppose that anything that raises money for the environment and opens peoples' eyes a little bit is a good thing, and if a few cents are squeezed out of Best Buy or FTD florists for the environment, why should I be churlish about it. I might even use it for my Amazon purchases and feel a little better about them when I know I should be bicycling down to Book City.

The World Wildlife Fund told the Star that it signed on with clickgreener.com because it saw the site as a new source of donations and another opportunity to change consumer behaviour.